


weatherman's report

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: Sportsfest 2018 [20]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Gen, Sportsfest 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: It will rain today.It always rains on his birthday, but he’s okay with that.where do I go when every no turns into maybe?





	weatherman's report

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Sportsfest 2018 Bonus Round 2: Quotes | [originally posted here](https://sportsfest.dreamwidth.org/8539.html?thread=1258843#cmt1258843)
> 
> I also wrote this for Kita's birthday. Happy birthday, my captain ♥

By the time Shinsuke is four, he is already practising the law of gravity. He has a ball in his hands and it drops to the ground. It will always drop to the ground in the end, no matter how many times he tosses it. This is a reassuring fact. The earth is damp with _tsuyu_ ’s passing showers, and summer will be upon them soon.

In the summer, his house is full of little bugs. He does not kill them, because his grandmother has told him the deities are omnipresent and it unkind to kill a living thing, and so he catches them in his cupped hands and lets them go in the garden, watches them scuttle away between blades of grass.

His grandmother kisses him on the forehead and smiles. _Someone is watching over you, Shin-chan._

 

* * *

 

It will rain today, he tells Aran, and takes two umbrellas with him to the gym. Sure enough, the weatherman’s report proves true. Aran has his own umbrella. Shinsuke gives his spare to the twins.

Osamu takes it without question, while Atsumu protests that a little bit of rain won’t hurt them. Shinsuke only stares at him, unblinking, until Osamu jabs him with an elbow and reminds him of the last time he came down with flu, and Atsumu deflates like a balloon.

“You don’t have to come,” says Shinsuke. He means it.

Atsumu’s eyes go wide. “Of course we’ll come, Kita-san! It’s your celebration! We can’t miss it.”

“You mean you can’t miss the _yakiniku_ ,” Osamu mumbles.

Atsumu opens the umbrella right in Osamu’s face so the tip of it nearly pokes an eye out, and Osamu lets out a low yelp, leans in to kick Atsumu in the shin.

Shinsuke walks on with Aran, the rain a gentle murmur on the canopy of his umbrella. There are flowers all along the side of the road, flowers in his footsteps. _It will rain today._ It always rains on his birthday, but he’s okay with that.

 

* * *

 

There is a law opposite to gravity, one that takes Shinsuke many more years to learn.

His faith is a lantern that never goes out. He is the quiet eye of every wayward storm. When he holds the flame steady in his hands, the moths that flit bravely in and out of the light remind him of kindnesses accumulated, of all the people who have showed him how to trust in things he cannot see and touch.

He believes the rain will fall, and the sun is waiting to drink it all up. He believes that what comes down can rise again.

He believes someone is watching over him after all, just not the deities his grandmother had in mind.

 

* * *

 

In years to come, he makes the journey from his university dorm back home once a month. July is his favourite season to travel, when the landscape is a warm haze beyond the windows of his train, and the plum in his pocket is sweet.

Atsumu texts him to say the team would like to take him to dinner. Shinsuke turns him down politely, promising he will drop by the gym tomorrow.

At his front step, he takes off his shoes and lines them up neatly, closes the door behind him to keep the flies out as he enters. The floor is clean. It smells of tofu and his grandmother’s _tonjiru_ simmering in a pot. He smiles, pauses at the family altar to bow his thanks, and goes into the kitchen.


End file.
